California Governor Gavin Newsom has filed a $787m defamation lawsuit against Fox News, accusing the network of misrepresenting a phone call between him and US President Donald Trump earlier this month amid immigration arrests and the subsequent protests in Los Angeles.
The complaint was filed on Friday in Delaware Superior Court, the state in which Fox Corp is incorporated.
Newsom spoke by phone with Trump late on June 6 – early June 7 on the East Coast, soon after protests broke out in Los Angeles following federal immigration raids.
Less than 24 hours later, the president sent National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the state, bypassing the governor’s office.
In an interview with NBC News on June 8, Newsom said that he had a civil conversation with the president, but he never brought up sending the National Guard.
“I tried to talk about LA, he wanted to talk about all these other issues,” Newsom said.
“He never once brought up the National Guard,” he added.
Newsom said he did not speak with Trump again, and confirmed this after Trump falsely told reporters on June 10 that he had spoken with the governor “a day ago”.
The suit alleged that the network had a “willingness to protect President Trump from his own false statements by smearing his political opponent Governor Newsom in a dispute over when the two last spoke during a period of national strife”.
The complaint said Fox nonetheless made a misleading video clip and multiple false statements about the timing of the last call, acting with actual malice in an effort to brand Newsom a liar and curry favour with Trump.
“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” Watters said on June 10 on his show, Jesse Watters Primetime, according to the complaint.
Watters’s report was accompanied by a chyron, a banner caption along the bottom of a TV screen, that said “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call,” the complaint added.
According to the complaint, Fox’s claim that Newsom lied was “calculated to provoke outrage and cause Governor Newsom significant harm” by making people less likely to support his causes, donate to his campaigns, or vote for him in elections.
“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” a spokesperson for Fox News told Al Jazeera in an email.
In a follow-up, Al Jazeera asked Fox if Watters and his production team fact-checked claims about the phone call before speaking about it – which is industry standard – but the network did not provide clarification.
Newsom’s punitive damages request is nearly identical to the $787.5m that Fox paid in 2023 to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit over alleged vote-rigging in the 2020 US presidential election.
To prevail in his lawsuit, Newsom would have to show Fox acted with actual malice, meaning it knew its statements were false or had reckless disregard for their truth.
According to the New York Times, Newsom would drop the lawsuit if Fox issued a retraction and host Jesse Watters apologised on-air for saying the governor lied about his call with Trump.
The governor’s office told Al Jazeera that it would not comment because Newsom is pursuing the lawsuit in a personal capacity and not through the office.
In an emailed statement, Newsom said, “If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences – just like it did in the Dominion case. I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet. Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”
Out of Trump’s playbook
Newsom’s lawsuit comes as Trump has gone after news organisations that have been critical of him. He reached a $15m settlement with ABC News after the network made in an inaccurate claim that a jury found Trump liable for rape in the civil case involving E Jean Carroll, rather than sexual assault.
The White House also recently went after the network when former White House correspondent Terry Moran called White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a “world-class hater”. Moran was later suspended and subsequently dismissed from the network.
Trump also sued CBS News for $20bn for the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, which was reportedly mediated into a settlement agreement of $20m with parent company Paramount Global, causing concern in the news division. Paramount has a pending merger with Skydance.
Trump has also slashed funding for public media, which the White House alleged was “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’”.
